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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
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DREAMING SALLY
A True Story of First Love, Sudden Death and Synchronicity in the Summer of 1968
A non-fiction work that Anne Collins, James' editor at Random House Canada, calls The Great Gatsby meets The Big Chill.
In July 1968, as the fabled Summer of Love fragmented into global violence and despair, 17- year old James FitzGerald fled the prison of his all-boys prep school to go on The Odyssey, an eight week, co-ed Grand Tour" of western Europe with 28 teenagers, travelling in four Volkswagen buses. Girls were a foreign species, and James, emotionally starved from his upbringing, fell in love with a witty, dynamic 18-year-old girl named Sally Wodehouse. Denying the fact that she loved an intimidatingly brilliant 21-year old named George Orr back home, James was swept into the vortex of a romantic triangle.
Not until 30 years later will George tell James something uncanny. Six months before the trip, he'd had a compelling dream: Sally will be killed in Europe this summer. George took the dream as literal truth and begged Sally not to travel. She was peeved by his possessiveness and their bond nearly snapped; when she left on the trip, George was abandoned to a state of simmering dread. Over the first six weeks of the trip, Sally and James grew inseparable, absorbing Renaissance art, dancing in Roman nightclubs, riding the wave of the '60s counterculture. On August 12, 1968, George could no longer bear the tension. Even though Sally was due home on August 30, he was convinced his dream would come true, and sent a telegram to her hotel in West Germany asking her to marry him. When James appeared in her room, she told him she had just sent George a return telegram: Yes. James burst into tears -- and the trance burst.
The next day, Sally fell out of her barely moving bus and cracked her skull. She died on the highway.
George's prescient dream haunted him for decades, and his first two marriages did not survive the ghost of Sally. Often he veered close to self-destruction. After a long detour as an acid-drenched hippie carpenter, he escaped to the west coast to exorcise the past and reinvent himself. Fifty years on, James FitzGerald has reconstructed through diaries, photographs and love letters including the last one Sally sent to George, never opened the time when two passionate young men were crazy about the same young woman.
James FitzGerald won the Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize for his previous memoir What Disturbs Our Blood. A national bestseller, it was also a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and the Toronto Book Award. His website is www.jamesfitzgerald.info
Not until 30 years later will George tell James something uncanny. Six months before the trip, he'd had a compelling dream: Sally will be killed in Europe this summer. George took the dream as literal truth and begged Sally not to travel. She was peeved by his possessiveness and their bond nearly snapped; when she left on the trip, George was abandoned to a state of simmering dread. Over the first six weeks of the trip, Sally and James grew inseparable, absorbing Renaissance art, dancing in Roman nightclubs, riding the wave of the '60s counterculture. On August 12, 1968, George could no longer bear the tension. Even though Sally was due home on August 30, he was convinced his dream would come true, and sent a telegram to her hotel in West Germany asking her to marry him. When James appeared in her room, she told him she had just sent George a return telegram: Yes. James burst into tears -- and the trance burst.
The next day, Sally fell out of her barely moving bus and cracked her skull. She died on the highway.
George's prescient dream haunted him for decades, and his first two marriages did not survive the ghost of Sally. Often he veered close to self-destruction. After a long detour as an acid-drenched hippie carpenter, he escaped to the west coast to exorcise the past and reinvent himself. Fifty years on, James FitzGerald has reconstructed through diaries, photographs and love letters including the last one Sally sent to George, never opened the time when two passionate young men were crazy about the same young woman.
James FitzGerald won the Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize for his previous memoir What Disturbs Our Blood. A national bestseller, it was also a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and the Toronto Book Award. His website is www.jamesfitzgerald.info
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Book
Published 2018-08-28 by Random House Canada |